


tu étais formidable (j'ètais fort minable)

by artaemin



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Feelings, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:27:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23452429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artaemin/pseuds/artaemin
Summary: tobio feels like a paper airplane
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	tu étais formidable (j'ètais fort minable)

**Author's Note:**

> title from formidable by stromae

“hi.”

tobio doesn’t want to turn around. that voice with its word sort of floats in air for a moment before falling at his feet like a martoriated paper airplane. his eyes are stuck to the floor. the tip of his logorated shoes. somehow, his eyes narrow before the pain can pierce his chest. these are his old shoes, something he’s fished from the very back of his closet one day, when he was searching for new places to bury his heart in. he had better ones, new and shiny. black, with details of a dark blue he’s never seen tokyo’s polluted sky. he wonders if the person talking is also looking at his shoes. he wonders if his pain’s strings are being stretched in the other’s heart too. 

“tobio-chan?”

his head snaps. because he’s supposed to answer, right? the world has been rotating everyday, uncaring of the sicknesses of his heart. the world goes on, with or without him. it goes on whether or not he’s on board, and so he has to lift his head up and look it in its eyes and make his vocal cords work the right way. it takes him a moment nonetheless, like he’s holding in his hands an instrument he hasn’t played in years. logorated little things. 

“hi, shouyou,” he finally says back. looks at him without really looking because he’s never managed to properly look at shouyou. it’s like staring at the sun. tobio’s eyes are unfocused, layn in front of him, but he manages to catch glimpses of him anyway. the red of his hair, like a wounded sunset. it’s gotten longer since the last time he saw him months ago. he has a little ponytail. the width of his eyes sort of catches him even if he doesn’t meet them, but then again he’s never been good at hiding from them in the first place. the gentle pink spread across his cheeks and pointy little nose. the shape of his lips, his mouth when he talks. so familiar it feels like constellating moles on his own skin with a cold knife.

“you look well,” shouyou says, because he’s supposed to. tobio knows he looks like shit. “how have you been?”

tobio thinks again about a paper airplane. the little white plane cuts air and flies forward, strong and confident and existing. then the air from under its wings leaves and it sees itself falling. finally, it falls on the floor, like a decimated soldier. tobio thinks that at that point the airplane isn’t a plane anymore. it can’t be, because it is not existing in the way it was supposed to. a paper airplane that doesn’t fly isn’t anything at all. he kinda feels like that, has been for the past four months. 

“i’ve been fine,” he says to, because he’s supposed to. an imperceptible shadow passes across shouyou’s eyes for a moment, like he knows tobio just lied. it makes tobio feel lost and vulnerable though, so he looks away. his eyes fall to his shoes again. he thinks he must have bought these when he was sixteen, maybe. they’re five years old now, it makes sense that they look old and worn out. it shouldn’t make sense for him to look the same. he wonders if his insides look like that too. maybe the reason he’s been feeling cold all the time lately is because his veins are worn out too, unable to make his blood flow well. “what about you?”

“i’m doing fine.” the tone of shouyou’s voice is considerate and tentative. tobio hates it. it makes him want to throw up. “who would have thought we’d end up here together.”

“yeah,” tobio says. then he adds, realizing he’s supposed to give an explanation, “i changed major--”  _ back then  _ he wants to say, but the words taste of decay in his mouth so he swallows them down. “--a few months ago. they let me take this course without making me start the year anew.”

“i bet it was tough. you’ve always been amazing, tobio.”  _ fuck _ , they both think in unison. shouyou is about to apologize but tobio knows it so he beats him to it.

“yeah, of course. it wasn’t a big deal for me.” he doesn’t know what else to say. the only thing that wants to climb out of his throat is  _ shouyou, what do i do with this pain? how do i live with myself now?  _ but that’s not something he’s supposed to say. that’s one of these things he’s supposed to cry for in the middle of dinner for, one of these things he’s supposed to cry for while brushing his teeth in the morning, one of these things he’s supposed to cry for while in queue for groceries. humans have many ways of killing themselves, but never enough ways to say them. 

they stay like that for a while, unsure of what’s the socially accepted etiquette for this situation. if the world wanted people to act how they feel then tobio would simply vanish. he would give anything to simply stop existing for a while, let his bones rest somewhere warm under fresh earth like the beast carcass that he is. his shoes look back at him and ask him if he’s still human. “i don’t think so,” he whispers to them.

“huh? what did you say?”

“nothing,” tobio says a bit too quick. fuck. he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to behave. it’s simply sickening. it reminds him of the last couple of weeks  _ back then, _ when he stopped talking entirely because he felt like a war discharge, something safe only to die with.  _ back then  _ when he used to throw up twice a day, like he was trying to reverse his insides and reshape them back into something human.  _ back then  _ when he sprained his wrists because he used to think his soul was trying to seep out of him and he used to twist his wrists around to distract himself from the pain with another one. he’s about to throw up.

tobio lifts his eyes from the floor to look around, wondering where the bathroom is. a little group of people is animatedly chatting in french and laughing. it makes him feel incomprehensibly lonely. there must be a bathroom somewhere, but he tries to concentrate on the fact that the professor might come in at any time now and he can’t really miss anything. thus, instead of puking, tobio ends up doing the closest thing to it.

“you broke up with me,” he blurts out. he can almost see them, the words that get spitted out of his mouth and fall somewhere between him and shouyou, on the dirty floor of a university where everyone speaks french while tobio speaks of heartbreak. or suicide. it’s all just a matter of semantics. 

shouyou’s eyes widen for a moment. then, they finally fall on the floor. the shape of his lips is suddenly twisting and it’s quickly starting to resemble a grimace of pain. tobio thinks that if there is a god he created shouyou right before creating him. god broke his own heart and made hinata out of it, out of the lightest goodness and the bloodiest beauty of soul, out of the leftovers of the universe and the rawest gentleness. at last, when god made tobio they were nothing more but bones and bile. tobio looks at hinata frowning and he thinks that he sort of wants to fucking die. 

“to--”

“i’m sorry!” it’s a pathetic attempt at making up for it. it  _ all. _ “i’m sorry,” he says again, quieter this time.  _ i’m sorry,  _ he mouths at the end. 

“don’t mind it, tobio-chan,” shouyou says. “i love you anyway.” humans are deeply fragile in their strength, but when shouyou says that all tobio wants is to be just fragile, to be allowed to break without having to cut his hands while hiding the pieces of him that he can’t show. the last time shouyou told him that he loves him was a few months ago, when crying silently from the floor in front of their old tv he asked him to please break up. when shouyou kneeled in front of him and asked him to please forgive him for telling him  _ i love you but i can’t be with you.  _ when tobio took the ruins of his own humanity and hanged them by their neck. when tobio was told that his love was hurting shouyou. when tobio broke his own heart. “i’m so--”

“bonjour, tous le monde!” the professor exclaims as he walks in. the sound of his shoes doesn’t follow him, like he was walking in air. like he was walking on paper airplanes. all the eyes in the room follow him, except two pairs of them, who are hanging on a red wire stretched from one chest to another. 

shouyou tries again. “i’m so--”

tobio closes his eyes and shouyou stops mid word. he feels like a paper airplane. there’s no air in the room. tobio opens his eyes and looks at his consumed shoes, the ones he drew back from a dirty corner of the closet because he couldn’t wear the ones shouyou had bought him without having to bite his fingers to blood. he looks around the room, a huge auditorium of a french university where he ended up at because he sacrificed weeks of sleep to study just so that he could change his major and study what shouyou is, just to be able to talk the same tongue while never talking again. at last, he looks at shouyou, and his lips curl in a small smile.

“tu étais formidable, j'ètais fort minable.”

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/fiirstllove)


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